ABSTRACT
It is ironic that Vietnam and the United States engaged in such a long andbitter war. They had collaborated during World War II, and US officialslistened as Ho Chi Minh quoted Thomas Jefferson in the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. Vietnam looked to the United States for moral and material aid as it sought liberation from French colonialism. In the end, however, the growing Cold War made it virtually impossible for American policy-makers to see beyond the communist doctrine espoused by the Vietnamese nationalists’ most influential leaders. Americans viewed the struggle in Vietnam as part of a new global conflict against communism, while the Vietnamese saw the war against the United States as the latest phase of a long fight for independence.
